Illustration and infographics

Malofiej 2002: ‘I am honored to be here – I didn’t even know my work could be labeled as infographics’. Rob Wood made a quiet impression, but his illustrations swept the room away in wonder.

Incredibly detailed and very complex drawings are the trademark of his firm. Customers include magazines such as National Geographic and Newsweek, – no newspapers.

Rob told about the process of his illustrations – from sketches to research and taking photos of people and items to be sure everything was correct.

This style just isn’t suited to breaking news, when you hear Rob say: ‘I had only little time to do this piece, I had to do it in three weeks’ …

Rob does a lot of hand-drawing, but has started to use the computers for maps, airbrush-effects and drawing complex patterns.

I guess the computer-department at the newsmedia would be scared if someone tried to work like Rob or put his illustrations on the pages. Rob told us, that he sometimes work on big files in Photoshop. ‘Big files’ meant filesizes around 1.75 Gb !

(This article was first published in 2002 in the former version of VisualJournalism.com)